Essay

At the turn of the twentieth century there was a resurging impulse toward social and political reform. In some ways it continued tendencies already apparent since the industrial revolution of the early nineteenth century, in which...

Essay

The United States emerged in the last third of the nineteenth century as an industrial powerhouse, producing goods that then circulated around the world. People in distant countries used American-made clothes, shoes, textiles,...

Glossary Term – Event

Glossary Term – Person

Jacob Riis (1849–1914) was a New York journalist and reformer. In 1890, Riis published How the Other Half Lives: Studies among the Tenements of New York, an exposé describing the terrible living conditions in New York City’s poorest neighborhoods. The successful book inspired public outcry for urban reforms.

Teaching Resource

Today, what is a tenement? "It is generally a brick building from four to six stories high on the street, frequently with a store on the first floor which, when used for the sale of liquor, has a side opening for the benefit of the inmates and to evade the Sunday law; four families occupy each floor, and a set of rooms consists of one or two dark closets, used as bedrooms, with a living room twelve feet by ten. The staircase is too often a dark well in the center of the house, and no direct through...